"The fattest man in Yocona" (as Faulkner names the county in this first Yoknapatawpha fiction) and almost ninety (94), Dr. Peabody is a fixture in the lives of many of Faulkner's characters, and the only character to appear in each of the first three Yoknapatawpha novels. Colonel Sartoris' regimental surgeon during the Civil War, he remains a close friend of the family and still practices medicine the old-fashioned way.